I am intentionally not posting the entire text here, because I want people to go and read it off Cricinfo. That way cricinfo logs will show Mr. Miller's article was heavily trafficked and that can't be bad for him.

So folks, let us "chulkafy" his back like he has done ours Go to Cricinfo and read the piece.

Many of us have always liked Andrew's pieces on CricInfo for their depth, balance and honesty and this is just a continuation of that. But I can promise you, many BD fans will read this and come on and have a go at him! Its just in our nature to turn against the messenger when the truth hurts too much! Or even a little!

Once Rafique steps off the plane, Ashley Giles will be the second-best slow left armer in England.

And thirty seconds later, when Enamul Haque Jr follows him, Ashley Giles will be the third best.

Three words about Ahmed Aftab ... Bob. Massie. Lords.

As for the quicks, Mashrafee is fit, and the young quick Shahadat is young, and he is quick. Baiysa will probably be the third seamer, and he's a poor man's Andy Bichel.

As far as the batting goes, if they can avoid the collapses, the talent is there. Bashar can bat, and Ashraful flogged the Indian bowling as if he had an Australian passport. And ask Brian Lara if the tail can bat.

Once Rafique steps off the plane, Ashley Giles will be the second-best slow left armer in England.

And thirty seconds later, when Enamul Haque Jr follows him, Ashley Giles will be the third best.

Three words about Ahmed Aftab ... Bob. Massie. Lords.

As for the quicks, Mashrafee is fit, and the young quick Shahadat is young, and he is quick. Baiysa will probably be the third seamer, and he's a poor man's Andy Bichel.

As far as the batting goes, if they can avoid the collapses, the talent is there. Bashar can bat, and Ashraful flogged the Indian bowling as if he had an Australian passport. And ask Brian Lara if the tail can bat.

On a hiding to nothing ? Sure.

But thats why they play the game on the field, not on paper.

Ian Whitchurch

Great response IanW. You might find yourself on the "quote"section.

I think the Brits will be surprised by our tail as well. They are a resilient bunch and I do hope against hope that they won't be called into service too often.

England's longest ever domestic season, of more than five-and-a-half months, opens on Friday at Lord's in front of the refurbished pavilion. It is a four-day game between last season's county champions, Warwickshire, and a MCC side largely composed of England A players who were increasingly exposed in Sri Lanka last month.

It is reassuring that some things in cricket never change: yes, the England and Wales Cricket Board still haven't realised that the best way to prepare county players for the big time is by staging A Tests and internationals home and away.

In addition to being the longest season, it will be superlative in another sense: England's worst scheduled season ever.

Have you been thinking 'oh great, it's an Ashes summer'? Well, it's not. It is an Ashes late summer, with months of faffing around before the main action, like going to see a film but having first to sit through loads of ads and several shorts.

Now I'm not one of those traditionalists arguing that the Australians should dock at Tilbury in late April and spread five Tests over four months: those tours were probably too long in their day and age let alone ours.

But by packing the series into late summer, starting on July 21 and ending on Sept 12, the ECB have gone to the opposite extreme and come up with a schedule which suits nobody except satellite television.

They cannot be blamed for staging two Tests and three internationals against Bangladesh because it was an Asian-dominated ICC which demanded their participation. The two early-season Tests will be hopeless mis-matches. Bangladesh's batsmen have been inadequate on their own pitches where the ball doesn't move. When it is swinging and seaming at Lord's and Chester-le-Street they will struggle to make 150.

Zimbabwe, who in 2003 earned the title of being the weakest Test batting side ever to tour England, probably won't keep it for long.

By what right have the ECB scheduled the four-yearly climax of English cricket during the next football season, with the Oval Test due to finish later than any Test match in England before?

What right do they have to make the players finish the second Test in Birmingham on Monday Aug 8 and start the third on Thursday Aug 11 in Manchester? Andrew Flintoff broke down when England played back-to-back Tests against South Africa with only two days in between. But there was a commercial imperative to play in Durban on Boxing Day and in Cape Town on Jan 2.

This summer there is no such excuse.

What right do the ECB have to turn upside down the traditional Ashes season to the extent that at the height of summer England will be playing the NatWest one-day series against Australia and Bangladesh and then, less than a week later, another series of three one-day internationals against Australia for the NatWest Challenge? When England were persuaded (with some justification) that they had to play 10 home internationals per summer to catch up with the rest of the one-day world, the ECB declared that England would have different opponents in the NatWest Challenge, but that has gone out of the window. Why vary the diet when you can pack in seven one-dayers against Australia?

The reason why our traditional Ashes summer has been mutilated is so that Sky can fill the football off-season with loads of one-day cricket, and the ECB - the first-class counties in all but name - have just been happy to take the money. The one point to be made for the next TV deal, aside from the money, is that starting next summer we just might have a balanced fixture list back.

The ECB have also made sure that any realistic chance of England regaining the Ashes has also gone out of the window, if the last hundred years of history is anything to go by.

Since 1905 England have regained the Ashes in England on four occasions - twice in one set of circumstances, twice in another.

In 1977 and 1985 England regained the Ashes when the Australians were divided against themselves and contributed to their own defeat (on the first occasion most of their players were busy signing for Kerry Packer's World Series, on the second some of them had gone on a rebel tour of apartheid South Africa). There is a slight chance that history will repeat itself in that the Australian players are still in dispute with their board over having their 25 per cent share of the overall revenue cut.

The only two occasions in the last hundred years when England have regained the Ashes here from an undivided Australia were in 1926 and 1953 in astonishingly similar circumstances. Both were very wet summers which allowed England to play dogged and defensive rearguard actions and draw the first four Tests. In the fifth at the Oval, both series were won when England's finger-spinners used a turning pitch to exploit the inexperience of Australia's batsmen in these conditions.

No catering for the weather of course, but the ECB have made sure there cannot be a repeat of this scenario. Australia's batsmen are experienced in Test cricket, which the ECB can do nothing about. But they are also experienced in English conditions, which the ECB - in the shape of the first-class counties - could have done something about, but haven't.

The accompanying table shows how English cricket has opened its gates and invited the Trojan horse within its walls. Not just a single horse either. Hampshire on their own last season invited just about the entire Trojan cavalry inside when they accommodated Shane Warne, Simon Katich, Michael Clarke and Shane Watson, who could be selected for the final place in the Australian Test party on Monday ahead of Nathan Bracken or Shaun Tait.

True, these Australians cricketers have given in return. Michael Vaughan says he learnt more about running between wickets from Darren Lehmann at Yorkshire than from anybody else. Andrew Strauss modelled his technique on Justin Langer's when he was at Middlesex, so it has not been one-way traffic. But overall Australia have benefited far more from this arrangement than England have done.

Someone very close to the England side was incandescent last winter at Somerset's proposition to Ricky Ponting to play a few more games for them this season before the Australians arrive. Mercifully, Ponting was too busy to take up the offer.

Why else was Ponting himself saying last week that Brett Lee would benefit from some county cricket ahead of the Ashes? Look at it with fresh eyes. Would England be more likely to win in India this winter if most of their players had experienced a season or two of domestic cricket there? There can only be one answer. Or would Bangladesh do better in England this summer if some of their players had played county cricket?

The accompanying table illustrates how much experience the Trojan horses have gained in England - and merely in championship matches, quite aside from one-day county cricket. Experience not only in their first-choice discipline: when Shane Warne and Mike Kasprowicz keep Adam Gilchrist efficient company this summer and take Australia's total past 500, they will be benefiting from their batting practice in county cricket.

No wonder the Australians will play only one first-class match before the Ashes. All of them except Gilchrist and Jason Gillespie have been made to feel at home already.

There is no way England can regain the Ashes if there is no official will for them to do so. Sure, the ECB in the form of the counties want England to do passably well in world cricket. Otherwise they won't get a TV deal which pays the counties' bills.

But the ambition to defeat Australia?

Why, if there is one, let the ECB rip up their old constitution and write into the new one that every single decision should be taken with the objective of making England number one.

New Zealand have done exactly that, albeit they don't have the playing resources to fulfil that ambition.

What we have at present is not madness, although it may seem so. It is a deliberate plan which enables the counties to prosper at England's expense this summer.

He is right though. It is an awfully scheduled summer! They should have done it the other way round. Have the Aussies in early summer and play them when its wet. The Aussies wouldn't be able to play their natural aggressive cricket and England could try to edge them out with some dogged batting. And then, they could have played us late in the summer when its dry and sunny to make it a more evenly matched series. I guess they figured no one would be up to playing once the Ashes was over. The intensity would go completely, while atleast before the Ashes, the players will have something to work up to. And the three Eng-Aus one dayers, what are those all about? Totally unecessary! They have packed the Ashes into too short a time, and the fitter team will last out, which is likely to be Australia as by the time the fourth and fifth Test come on, England would have played a couple of Tests more this summer than the Aussies! This really is the problem of sports trying to accomodate tv networks. Great for revenue, terrible for cricket itself!